892 
ECZEMA EPIZOOTICA. 
aphthous fever prevailed from the Caspian Sea to the 
Adriatic. In 1851 and 1855 there was a new eruption of 
Rinderpest, soon followed, in 1855 and 1856, by foot-and- 
mouth disease, which spread over Germany, into Switzerland 
and the east of France. Lastly, in 1861, 1862, and 1863, the 
rinderpest showed itself in all the Danubian provinces, in 
Turkey, and Italy; and shortly after an epizooty of aphthous 
fever broke out in Germany, Switzerland, and France. In 
the last century the two diseases were often observed to coin¬ 
cide in their irruptions; the epizooty of 1763-64 especially is 
confounded in many points with the rinderpest. These coin¬ 
cidences, however, fail when we come to examine the visi¬ 
tations of these contagions to our own country in this 
century. 
Roche-Lubin, Sainte-Colombe, and Lafosse (^Traite de 
Pathologic Veterinaire'’), have remarked the simultaneous ex¬ 
istence of pleuro-pneumonia and aphthous fever, but without 
any mixture of the two maladies, either in the same com¬ 
munes or stables; but in the majority of instances the 
former disease has succeeded the latter. 
Of the extreme contagiousness of the malady there can be 
no doubt whatever, and it is so readily inoculable, that it can 
be produced in healthy animals by merely impregnating their 
mouths with the oral discharge, or giving them fodder which 
has been so soiled by diseased beasts. In Germany it has been 
often noted that a drove of cattle or pigs passing through a 
village or district, without even halting, have left the infec¬ 
tion behind them. Healthy stock passing across their tracks 
have been contaminated. 
There can be little doubt as to the transmission of the 
disease to man, chiefly by partaking of the milk obtained 
from cows in which the secretion has not been entirely sup¬ 
pressed. Besides the numerous accidental cases on record, 
Hertwig, Marin, and Villain have experimentally produced 
in themselves fever, and an aphthous eruption in the mouth, 
by drinking milk drawn from the teats of cows so involved. 
The negative results arrived at by other veterinarians were, 
in all probability, due to the fact that they used milk obtained 
from animals whose teats were not afiected; and it is ex¬ 
tremely likely that in those cases in which the external 
orifice of the teat is circumscribed by aphthae, the milk, if 
consumed by human beings or animals, will reproduce the 
morbid symptoms in them. That the teat, when it shares in 
the eruption, is the most probable source of the reproduction 
of the malady in man appears to be proved by the many 
examples to be found in Continental veterinary literature of 
